He must consult with Dr. Sones about this, and off he went to his place, taking with him all the materials for examination which he had left. Dr. Sones listened to his story with the interest of a toxicologist who was on the track of a terrible crime; for to that he agreed with Mr. Mole all the circumstances seemed to point. “Leave everything with me for a week,” said he, “and then come again. Meanwhile, if I want you, I will write.” Mrs. Crowe was buried in Highgate Cemetery, and the sincere condolences of all the staff were duly presented to the bereaved surgeon. Dr. Stanforth saw nothing at all peculiar in the circumstance of the death, and had not even thought of attributing it to other than a quite ordinary cause. After all, what was there to excite suspicion? There was some rather violent vomiting in a patient who was the subject of constant nausea, and the attendant symptoms of a chronically inflamed stomach. True, she died after a meal of mushrooms. Dangerous things at all times, she, of all people, should never have touched them; but they were some of the few articles of diet the poor lady ever fancied, and it was hard to deny them to her. “Had the mushrooms anything to do with her death?” asked Mr. Crowe. He thought not, except in causing perhaps an attack of acute dyspepsia. The fruiterer declared that it was impossible any deleterious fungus could have got into the basket; he had sold a dozen that same morning, and no other purchaser had found any fault with them. At the expiration of the week Mr. Mole called upon Dr. Sones. “You have,” said the latter, “not only the alkaloid muscarin here, but an acrid volatile principle which could not have remained in the mushrooms after cooking. This must have either been added to the dish after it left the kitchen, or been administered in some other form than the food in question. Now so powerful is this principle in the vomit in the handkerchief you have brought me, that I have come to the conclusion it could only have been derived from the Russian species we investigated together last year. I know no English fungus which contains it in precisely this form. Again, in the remains of the dish in the other handkerchief, though I find lorchelin plentifully, I do not find the irritant poison I have mentioned. I should conclude, therefore, that this was administered some other way.” “The pill!” cried Mr. Mole. “Wasn’t it in the pill? Was not the box tampered with, and was not a pill compounded of this irritant poison substituted for the harmless morphia ones the box previously contained?” “That is quite likely, and the poison either given as medicine, or added surreptitiously to the dish after it was prepared.”